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Boys play with dolls all the time!

Flashback Friday, a column on feminist notions...


Anna Nicole Smith just died and the documentary about her devoted several minutes to telling us all about the infections she had after the plastic surgery, and the time she had to have her one silicone sack out for a while. She stayed at home so no one could see she was lop-sided.

The woman on Doctor 90210 that pitched to have her anus peroxided, one of many procedures she had had done. The woman who phoned into 702 crying because she was about to go for her eleventh operation to fix a botched boob job. Who doesn't see any hope for herself to ever look normal.

Put concisely, thankfully by my girlfriend: "I would feel like I was touching props." Who said that boys don't play with dolls, Barbies gone bananas. Soon they will be able to buy a woman on eBay, 'comes with five outfits and a vacuum cleaner'.

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Cinnamon Gurl sparked this off. Thanks. Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.

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Anonymous said…
That's kind of odd, reading those two posts one after another. In Aus there aren't laws against FGM and an Angolan friend of mine was even approached by a Somalian woman seeking someone to "do" her daughter. *shudder*
Many people have connected bodily mutilation, plastic surgery and low self esteem in the female caste, but it's a long slog to change male attitudes to what they seem to see as walking sex toys.
1:26 pm
Tanya Pretorius said…
And we seem to be going in the wrong direction re males seeing females as sex toys. I recently went hunting vintage porn and found that the women were way more natural - dark haired, abandonedly enjoying their fun, potbellied, hairy legged, real.

I saw a documentary by a woman (black) documentary-maker - a young woman - who took a hidden camera to a town meeting and then brought up the FGM issue. The recorded comments by men (although naturally there were few women) were that women must be infibulated otherwise the cannot produce male children. Another said that if the woman was HIV and not infibulated she could infect you. Another said that the woman would cause trouble in the home by refusing to cook. Cook! Imagine - that pain and that trauma so that you can be cooked for.
1:45 pm
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